Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.

The campaign is right to bristle at the neoconservative label. That�s not because the label is inaccurate. Romney�s foreign policy statements often sound as if they are drafted by Weekly Standard staff writers. Except for McCain, Romney has been campaigning as the most unapologetic adherent to neoconservative foreign policy views of any Republican nominee. Regardless of the �range of backgrounds� of his advisers, the diversity of their views is not very great.Two-thirds of them worked for George W. Bush in some capacity. The campaign bristles at the description because they understand that the neoconservative label is politically damaging. That doesn�t seem to stop Romney from giving voters every reason to believe that his foreign policy would be a neoconservative one.

1. Romney here appears to be saying that if he has to choose, he chooses military power over taking care of the social needs of the citizenry. Even recognizing that military power is important, this is a telling statement. It is odd, or so it seems to me, to so easily dismiss the importance of social needs and to, to use Erik�s word, sneer at the Europeans for diverting more resources to that than to military power.

2. Of course, an underlying question: how big is big enough? As Doug Mataconis noted recently, he US already spends the most in raw terms than any other country in the world. Indeed, the US spends six times was the second place country (China) spends and over 11 times what the number three county (Russia) spends. In terms of the Europe quip and Romney, it is worth noting that four of the top ten in raw spending are European countries (France, the UK, Germany, and Italy). Further, along those same lines, Doug notes:

If you add in the military budgets of the NATO and non-NATO allies in the Top 20, it amounts to more than 70% of the worldwide military spending, dwarfing the spending of nations like China, Russia, and Iran to a considerable degree. Based on sheer numbers alone, the idea that the United States isn�t spending enough on defense, a refrain one hears frequently from the hawkish wing of the GOP, is quite simply absurd.

Romney will give the wheel to the neocons again. I don't like a lot of what Obama has done but I sure don't want the Weekly Standard crew in charge again. We should all know how that worked out last time.

2 comments:

Perhaps you should take a look at this article in Foreign Policy, which states clearly that "Despite his campaign rhetoric, Romney would be quite comfortable carrying out President Obama's foreign policy because it accords so closely with his own."

Sorry Charles DI find that article to be absurd. Everything I have seen would indicate that Romney has too little knowledge of foreign policy issues to be able to make any policy decisions. Like George W Bush he will simply turn it over to others and judging from his advisers those others will be the same people who are always looking for quagmires like Iraq and Afghanistan.